How A Scientific Study of Human Languages Supports The Bible

I came across a very interesting article called "The Original Human Language Like Yoda Sounded" by Natalie Wolchover at Fox News. Here is an important quote;

Sentences like Yoda you form?

Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They've found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original "proto-human language" might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from "Star Wars."

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence "I like you." Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in "I you like." In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering ("I you like").

"This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else," Ruhlen told Life's Little Mysteries.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/14/original-human-language-like-yoda-sounded/#ixzz1bFq32328

In this scientific study published by the National Academy of Sciences, Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages researchers were able to trace the origin of "modern" human language to a small East African population. From this point all modern languages spread across the world and "evolved".

Why is this minor detail such a big deal for students of faith and science? It points directly to what was written in The Bible!

Let me share with you the following scripture;

Genesis 11:1-9(NLT) -

The Tower of Babel

1 At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. 2 As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.

3 They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”

5 But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6 “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”

8 In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.

I did some research of my own and found this map of the Middle East provided by World Atlas.

The Bible traces the origin of modern human language to the land of Shinar which is described as follows at Encyclopedia.com;

A plain in Babylonia (modern S. Iraq), where the tower of Babel was supposed to have been built (Gen. 11: 2). Some of the Israelite exiles were to be rescued from there (Isa. 11: 11). In Zechariah's seventh vision the wickedness and guilt of Judah is sealed in a basket and carried to Shinar to be deposited in a temple of its own (Zech. 5: 11).

Take a look at the map of the Middle East. Pay close attention to the proximity of the East African nation of Egypt and Southern Iraq (Babylonia). Both The Bible and scientific research trace the origin of human language to the same general region. In addition, they both agree that all modern language spread throughout the world from that location. If The Bible is a fictional collection of religious documents with no historical or scientific basis what's the probability that The Book of Genesis written several thousand years before this study could get this one right?

At Faith Science one aspect of our mission is to expose scientific mysteries hidden within scriptures. The scientific mystery of the origin of human language is revealed in The Book of Genesis and it's supported by scientific research.

This one's huge!